Motor Sports

FORD TAURUS NEXT NASCAR RACER

by Larry Roberts

August 22, 1997

It's going to take Ford racing fans a little time to adjust to the
change, but the front-wheel-drive revolution has grabbed a piece of the
NASCAR racing turf. For 1998, the premiere Ford NASCAR Winston Cup race
car will be shaped like that quintessential corporate lease car, the
Ford Taurus four-door sedan.

Before you Blue Oval enthusiasts assemble for a mass march on NASCAR
headquarters to hold demonstrations, I should qualify the above
statement with further elucidations. NASCAR is not getting into CART's
Super Touring support race program of two-liter, front-drive racing
sedans, although that category could use a few dozen more entries. The
NASCAR Taurus uses a traditional 358 cubic-inch V8 engine driving an
equally traditional Ford nine-inch differential in the rear through a
traditional four-speed transmission. The chassis will also be the
traditional lion-cage tube frame with all the traditional racing
accouterments like a fuel cell, fire extinguisher system, etc.

But it doesn't take too much imagination to see the resemblance
between the NASCAR Taurus and the 9000+ 1998 "corporate" Tauruses that
Ford will be delivering to Hewlett-Packard soon. One whimsical design
feature added to the racer is in the execution of the back door handles.
Since NASCAR race cars are all coupes by definition, the "rear" door
handles of the NASCAR Taurus are painted onto the body work.

As for the pur sang concept that the racer Taurus is rear-drive
while the "street" Taurus is front-drive, one need only look under the
skin of any of the NASCAR Winston Cup Chevrolet Monte Carlos and the new
Monte Carlos presently on the showroom floor of local Chevy dealerships
to see an parallel dissimilarity.

Ford Motor Company decided last year to phase out the Thunderbird
name along with the car itself in mid-1998 and as a result, the Ford
Thunderbird NASCAR stock car racers will go with it. As TV race fans
know, big-time racing is, in reality, show business, and corporate
sponsorship is the name of the game. Ford would like to sell lots more
Taurus sedans to the general public and the idea that what wins in
NASCAR on Sunday will sell well at dealerships on Monday has been market
researched many times. So the rationale is simple: Ford won't be selling
T'birds anymore, so it's pointless to promote them.

The highly competitive NASCAR Thunderbirds will continue to be raced
in Winston Cup events in '98, but then they'll be phased out and
assigned to lesser series competitions.

The first of the NASCAR Taurus racers has had no track time and was
only introduced to the motorsports press at an unveiling at the end of
July. In fact, Ford's Special Vehicles Operations (SVO) and Motorsports
Technology Department only received "official" company word that the
Thunderbird would be history a few months ago. Obviously, it didn't come
as a complete surprise to SVO as work on the new Taurus racer had begun
in December of last year.

Two NASCAR teams are currently in possession of the new chassis.
Roush Racing and Penske South (who else but the all-powerful Penske?)
were both involved in the presentation but to field a complete NASCAR
Winston Cup team next year, Jack Roush said that he'll need 40 chassis
for the superspeedways, short ovals (paved and dirt) and road circuits
as well as backup units. And this doesn't take into account that there
are almost 20 other Winston Cup teams under contract to field Fords, and
that they too must have a full compliment of vehicles and parts.

Ford is savvy enough to get the full measure of publicity out of the
new NASCAR Taurus and Ford head honcho Alex Toutman has recently brought
it to a Ford/Hewlett-Packard charity function in California. It
naturally created a sensation, but there was one drawback: many of the
younger H-P executives wanted replicas as their company cars. That would
definitely make exiting the company parking lot at 5 p.m. every
afternoon very interesting.

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